Only true history-lovers know this story about the man who saved the world

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The man who saved the world, reprimanded in his own country but still awarded in the USA and Germany.

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

Bertrand Russel

On the 26th of September, 1983, Soviet nuclear defense alarms went off. The protocol required to launch a retaliatory attack without hesitation. On that day, Stanislav Petrov was on duty on his shift in Soviet Army Missile Forces and had to take a landmark decision.

At that time, he was a lieutenant colonel of Soviet Army and happened to be the duty officer in Serpukhov-15, a command center not far from Moscow.

He was responsible for monitoring Soviet military early-warning satellites over the United States. The probability of detection was 50% but, in order to retaliate in time, the decision was to be taken without delay.

Petrov declared the system's indication a false alarm. According to his words, his civilian experience helped him to recognize the malfunction of missile detection system. In later interviews he said that if there had been any of his colleagues on his shift, they would have followed the instructions and reported missiles' launch. And most likely, the top leadership would make a decision to strike back.

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It is hard to overestimate the value of Petrov's timely decision. Some may say that he actually did nothing, but taking the right decision, especially within a short period of time, can play a huge role in certain circumstances. Surely, it was not absence of action but the action, based on sober consideration of consequences of all possible decisions.

Petrov had been developing the Soviet Union's early warning system at a research institute. According to the words of Yuri Votintsev, Petrov's commander, the latter was "duly noted" for his "correct actions", though Petrov says that after the incident, its investigation and intense questioning he was reprimanded for not filling the war diary with the incident's description. All the more so, it was classified and not widely known until 1991 when a Russian journalist interviewed Col. Gen. Ret. Votintsev and published an article about these events.

In the 2014 documentary "The Man Who Saved the World", Stanislav Petrov said:

In 2004, Petrov received World Citizen Award in San Francisco and second special World Citizen Award during a meeting at the United Nations in New York. He was also awarded German Media award in 2012 and "the Dresden Prise" in Germany in 2013.

Stanislav died on May 19, 2017, at the age of 77

Find out more about the story from Stanislav Petrov himself:

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